Emilia Clarke is known to many of us as Daenerys Targaryen the mother of dragons and – let’s face it one of the most badass characters on Game of Thrones – while she was conquering kingdoms onscreen little did her fans know she was battling an even bigger fight offscreen.

In an essay titled ‘A Battle For My Life,’ published in the New Yorker, the actress reveals that in 2011 she was rushed to the hospital for urgent surgery for a subarachnoid hemorrhage – a type of stroke that one-third of patients can die from.
The actress wrote that she had been pushing herself hard in the gym, and felt the pressure she was experiencing from the new fame. During one of her workout session, the aneurysm hit. “My trainer had me get into the plank position, and I immediately felt as though an elastic band were squeezing my brain. I tried to ignore the pain and push through it, but I just couldn’t. I told my trainer I had to take a break. Somehow, almost crawling, I made it to the locker room. I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill. Meanwhile, the pain—shooting, stabbing, constricting pain—was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged.”

Clarke went on to write that despite the fear for her life, a bigger fear was centered on her career. She wrote: “I’d never experienced fear like that — a sense of doom closing in. I could see my life ahead, and it wasn’t worth living. I am an actor; I need to remember my lines. Now I couldn’t recall my name. In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug. I asked the medical staff to let me die. My job — my entire dream of what my life would be — centered on language, on communication. Without that, I was lost.”

On CBS This Morning the actress shared the photos from her hospitalization and opened up more about what would become on the ongoing fight. Clarke had returned to work six weeks after the incident and told her bosses she wanted her health condition to remain private, “I told my bosses at Thrones about my condition, but I didn’t want it to be a subject of public discussion and dissection. The show must go on! Season two would be my worst. I didn’t know what Daenerys was doing. If I am truly being honest, every minute of every day I thought I was going to die,” she wrote.

Her fears were reawoken when she suffered her second aneurysm two years later. “So, with the second one, there was a bit of my brain that actually died,” Clarke said. “If a part of your brain doesn’t get blood to it for a minute, it will just no longer work. It’s like you short circuit. So, I had that. And they didn’t know what it was. They literally were looking at the brain and being like, ‘Well, we think it could be her concentration, it could be her peripheral vision [affected].’ I always say it’s my taste in men that’s no longer there! That’s the part of my brain, yeah, my decent taste in men.”

Once again the only thing she could think about was her career, saying in her interview she thought this time might have caused her to lose her ability completely. “Really, really, really did. That was a deep paranoia, from the first one as well. I was like, ‘What if something has short-circuited in my brain and I can’t act anymore?’ I mean, literally it’s been my reason for living for a very long time!”

Trying to recover from a second brain injury was much more difficult wrote Clarke, “The recovery was even more painful than it had been after the first surgery. I looked as though I had been through a war more gruesome than any that Daenerys experienced.” In her interview she said her role as powerful Khaleesi helped her get her fire back. “you go on set and you play a badass and you walk through fire, and that became the thing that just saved me from considering my own mortality.”

The actress wrote in her essay she felt it was time to open up about her condition and said she felt fortunate: “After keeping quiet all these years, I’m telling you the truth in full. Please believe me: I know that I am hardly unique, hardly alone. Countless people have suffered far worse, and with nothing like the care I was so lucky to receive.”

And has even begun a charity organization to promote visibility for brain inury survivors, “I’ve decided to throw myself into a charity I’ve helped develop in conjunction with partners in the U.K. and the U.S. It is called SameYou, and it aims to provide treatment for people recovering from brain injuries and stroke.”
Ramping up for the finale of Game of Thrones, the actress is completely in the clear brain-wise and is looking forward to the future. “There’s been so much life that I’ve lived in the ten years that I’ve been working on the show. So, you’re saying good-bye to so much more than just the character. I’m saying good-bye to my twenties!”